


Untitled

by comixologist



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Dark Character, Gen, Plotty, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-11-08
Updated: 2010-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-13 03:05:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/132131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comixologist/pseuds/comixologist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex Luthor is shrewd, meticulous, devastatingly intelligent, and viciously paranoid. As it happens, Tim Drake is like that, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. [breach of security]

By his eighth birthday, Tim had solved the biggest mystery in Gotham. He might have even been satisfied, if he hadn't known that he couldn't tell anyone about it. Jack, his father, might have noticed that something had taken his son's interest when the boy asked, tentatively, if the two of them could go to the park.

Tim had not yet shown an affinity for the outdoors.

Normally, he boarded himself up in his room with the newspaper and endless piles of books, always hungry to know a little more. Jack, though he was thrilled with his son's boundless curiosity and capability to simply absorb knowledge, found himself relieved. His boy wasn't a freak, just slow on the uptake. At least, that was what Jack thought. Tim went out of his way to ensure that his father never had reason to think otherwise, even though he found himself wrapped more and more tightly up in obsession with What He'd Found Out.

Tim was ten when his mother died. She'd slipped away while he was hiding under her bed, shoved there and told in a terrified, hushed voice not to dare move or breathe or do so much as sneeze. The man who had forced his way into their home killed her quickly, at least, once he was done violating her in her own bedroom. The smell of blood, Tim discovered, was different in large amounts than in small - oddly sweet and sticky in his nostrils in a way that the stuff that came out of scraped knees never had been. It had soaked through the mattress by the time his father came home. It wasn't until Tim was quite certain that those footsteps in the front hallway were familiar ones that he crawled out from beneath the bed, all tearstained cheeks and trembling apologies.

Watching the police case the scene and gather evidence was comforting - he observed their mistakes and made a running tally in his head of everything they'd missed and what they would get wrong. Tim wasn't concerned with what the police would do, because of that mystery he'd solved two years before; he knew that mystery had the power to bring his mother's killer to justice.

So Tim waited. He watched the news with razor-sharp interest, snuck from his window at night and left his grief-riddled father to his cigarettes and brandy, to watch the Dark Knight and his new more burly companion wreak vengeance down on the city.

Tim thought, those first months, that Mr Wayne was only taking his time to be absolutely sure it was the tall man with the gravelly voice and the thinning mouse-brown hair who killed her. The one that drove the cable company's repair truck. He couldn't fault the Bat for biding his time and give the man the sensation that just maybe he'd gotten away with what he'd done, before swooping down on him and throwing him away into a cell to rot. And Tim waited.

Tim thought, after an excruciating one hundred and seventy-two days had gone by, that the Bat perhaps had realized that he was being followed and spied on night after night, and was punishing him for his curiosity. But he remained unphased in his nightly movements, seemingly unaware of the pair of crisp blue eyes that spied on he and the Todd boy. Tim was growing impatient.

When one year rolled by on the calendar and still Gotham's vigilante had done nothing, Tim realized that his mother's death had gone by unnoticed. The police, impotent as always, had left the case to grow cold. Batman wasn't going to pick it up.

Tim set about taking care of the problem, all the while making top marks in school, convincing his father he was only slightly above average by bringing home the occasional 94 and playing soccer some afternoons with a group of boys who were unimportant enough to make halfway-friends with.

Tim didn't kill the man, or even go out of his way to set the series of events which caused his death in motion. "Accidentally" stumbling into an alley where a drug deal was going sour and dropping a business card that didn't belong to him was easy. Planting a few seeds of discord among the no-doubt equally disgusting characters his mother's killer spent his recreational time with had taken little more than a phone call in a sweet, feminine lilt saying that no, there was no message, the police department would call back later.

A great swelling of pride settled into Tim's stomach when he heard the police scanner buzz to life, reporting that two men, apparantly in the process of robbing an empty house, began to argue and killed one another. The pictures on the news websites confirmed and reinforced his sense of satisfaction at what he'd done, and Tim was able to take a deep breath and relax. Sort of.

He realized, two days later, that not only was he furious with the Bat for leaving him to take matters into his own hands, he needed another mystery to solve. Without his mind working constantly, attacking a dozen problems at once, Tim had to consider that he had only meant for the man to be caught doing something illegal, perhaps ratted out and put in jail. His death, Tim told himself, should not have made him feel nearly so smug.

The mystery Tim chose next was not unlike his first solve, but required a more long-distance style of information gathering. Tim was twelve, by the time Jason Todd died, and had taken interest in the behavior of one big blue boyscout that reigned over Metropolis' golden skyline.

When he realized just who was fooling the world with a slouch and a pair of glasses, Tim felt oddly disappointed in himself for not figuring it out sooner. He also made a note to himself, for future use; poor posture can be enough of a disguise.

Still, Tim felt unsatisfied.

While Gotham's night watchman began to put himself in more and more danger, and Metropolis' alien defender attempted to clean up both of their messes, Tim found himself distracted by the political endeavors of a green-party candidate in Star City.

By his thirteenth birthday, he had compiled an entire closet's worth of information on various members of the so-called "Justice League", neatly organized and written in cypher. He had also developed a plan.

Tim found that the vigilante community was something of a joke, picking and choosing which crimes to stop and which to allow for the sake of their own survival. By prolonging the necessity for a Batman in Gotham, Mr Wayne had assured himself warm welcome in spite of all that he'd done wrong. By ensuring political turmoil in Star City, Ollie Queen had set the stage for Green Arrow to make a few carefully-planned, heroic endeavors to endear himself to the populous. By driving fear of what no human could overcome into the heart of each citizen in Metropolis, Clark Kent had secured Superman's role as savior with little more than a few choice editorials.

Self-preservation, rather than the thrill of doing what was right, was all that Tim could see driving their good deeds. How hypocritical, he thought. How disappointing.

To set his plan in motion, the boy knew that he would have to draw attention to himself - the right kind of attention, from the right people. He found that it wasn't difficult at all to break through the layers on layers of security coding, to burrow his way into one particular corporation's personnel files. He made sure to only do this sort of work from public access computers, so as not to make himself too easy to trace. He made sure to leave one or two hints of his presence, just enough to raise a flag in the mind of one brilliant individual.

He created a document, which only That Man could access, and first left him a simple note to open their playful correspondence.

 _Mr Luthor,_ the text said plainly, _you ought to think about improving your network's security._

And then, all Tim had to do was wait.


	2. [the game is afoot]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lex sets a few search parameters.

Lex leaned back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and was quite unnerved to find himself smiling. There was something infuriating about the tone of that one sentence, so simple and nonchalant, he knew that it must've been a hook. He could smell the bait there, in the helpful curve and loop of Times New Roman. With a sigh, Lex ran one broad, carefully-manicured hand over his scalp and took a sip of brandy. Mercy was just outside, a button-push away from alerting the systems management division that they'd all lost their jobs.

Lex could afford to fire the entire department, couldn't he? How cost-effective would that be?

Picking up the phone, Lex made a quick call to the front desk, asking that Joanne please cancel his meetings from 2:30 to 4:00. Something had come up that needed his personal attention, he said simply, and tried to ignore the irritating way she giggled whenever he spoke to her.

Mercy received the notification in the hall a moment later, and knocked three times before stepping into the office and asking in her gruff way, "Anything I can assist with, Sir?"

"Oh, no," the green-eyed man said smoothly, gesturing with his glass for her to go about her usual business. As an afterthought, he called, "Have them send up Marcus, from Systems Administration."

He ignored Mercy's dutiful nod, set his drink down, and let the smile melt off of his face before diving into his network's access history. That the document had appeared on his personal machine, and apparently no one else's, meant that he would need to alter all of his passwords. He was running a few major, basic scans to determine if anything was missing, copied, or otherwise rifled through without authorization.

By the time Marcus - a short, fat man with wobbling jowls and a thin upturned nose - made his way up all those floors to get to the executive office, Lex was satisfied that none of his personal files had been tampered with. It was not at all reassuring, however, because it meant that his visitor - whomever he was - didn't want something that was immediately obvious. Other than attention.

Lex had certainly been forced to sit up and take notice, and he was loathe to do anything that might imply he'd been (however remotely) rattled.

"H-hello, sir! My, goodness, this is an honor," Marcus began in a high-pitched, squirrelly voice. His double-chin turned pink and shook while he spoke, working in collaboration with his ratty, greying blonde ponytail and food-stained tie to remind Lex just why it was he'd never called Marcus into his office before. Hiding his distaste for the other man, Lex stood at his desk, gesturing for Marcus to sit down in one of the expensive leather chairs that were available. It creaked beneath the man's weight, and before he could start to thank Lex for this opportunity, Lex used his rather commanding voice and presence to shut him up.

"We were hacked this morning," he announced casually, pinning Marcus where he sat. The man began to squirm in his seat, clearly flabbergasted by the news. He then did the most unintelligent thing he could have.

"Hacked, sir? Are you sure?"

As he settled back into his desk chair, Lex barked, "Quite sure. You're not being paid to question my opinions or information."

"Oh, no sir. Sorry sir," the man chirped. Such a large man, older than Lex by at least ten years, should not have been 'chirping'.

"I don't like repeating myself, and I don't do it often - it's a waste of my time and yours. Since my time is infinitely more valuable, you'd be wise not to waste it again or you may find yourself in a position of not being paid to do anything in these offices. Am I being quite clear?"

Marcus, bug-eyed and beet red, nodded.

"We were hacked this morning," he said again, in a crisp and suddenly very calm tone. "You're going to find out who did it. You'll drop all other projects, and focus solely on this one. You'll report directly to me, at the end of each day, and give me your findings on this coding signature."

Turning his sleek, flat-screened monitor around so that the man could see the trace coding that Lex had noticed earlier, highlighted just in case Marcus was as much of an idiot as he looked to be, Lex leaned forward against his desk. "You're not going to speak about this to anyone, in the office or out, at risk of breach of your employment contract concerning nondisclosure."

Again, the red-faced man nodded, trying to hide the fact that he was trembling and getting sweat from his palms all over Lex's expensive leather furniture. "Y-yes, sir," he managed, practically launching out of his chair.

"Oh, and Marcus," Lex said as he off-handedly pushed the buttons required to send the coded signature in question down to the other man's computer, "you have until the end of the week."

"F-four days, sir?"  
"Four days. Will that be a problem?"  
"Oh, no sir, not at all," Marcus lied, and scurried out into the hall. Lex resisted the urge to roll his eyes, and turned his attention back to the friendly little note on his desk.

Whomever had done this had not wanted information. They'd not wanted to cause any damage (yet), and they had gone out of the way to leave both signature and note. Lex was no fool. He'd just needed a moment to suspend his disbelief that anyone capable of hacking into LexCorp's files wouldn't be interested in some sort of corporate espionage.

No, whoever this was, they wanted attention. Even more interesting, they (well, he, more likely) had asked for it in a way that Lex simply couldn't ignore.

Considering his options for a moment, Lex leaned back in his chair.

 _I'll take it under consideration,_ he wrote, lips quirked up in an amused smile. _Tell me, which is it you're interested in; a lawsuit or an interview?_

When Tim cracked the new set of passwords, he couldn't help but laugh.

 _Oh, sir,_ he wrote, _I wouldn't presume to waste your time with either. You're a busy man, what with all those pet projects._

 _Curiosity killed the cat, my friend,_ Lex replied in hasty type, his hackles on the rise.

 _But satisfaction brought him back. No need to kill the cat, sir. The cat isn't threatening, really. He is only curious, after all._

 _I'm losing my patience._

 _Well, that's only natural. Now is the dramatic moment of fate, when you hear a step upon the stair which is walking into your life and you know not whether for good or ill!_

"Holmes," Lex muttered under his breath, bewildered frustration turning the tips of his ears red and forcing his brow to crease. The tension rushed out of his shoulders, and Lex let loose a long, rumbling laugh. The bastard was quoting The Hound of the Baskervilles at him. How ... quaint.

On the small yellow legal pad he kept on his desk, Lex scrawled out a few notes.

Under Thirty.  
Student?  
Playful.  
Recovers well when threatened.  
Perhaps well-read.  
Local?  
Holmes.

Tim watched, one knee hugged against his chest, as Lex's computer accessed an international address database, and called up a list of all Baker Streets in the Eastern Standard Time zone. He laughed, and again drew Lex's attention to the word document they'd been using as correspondence.

 _Hopefully you'll get some of your patience back. I'm kind of enjoying this part. The thrill of the chase, and all,_ Tim typed, before logging out of LexCorp's system and the computer he was working on. Shouldering his book bag and checking his watch, he made his way out of Gotham University's main library, located squarely at the corner of Baker and 22nd. He knew it was kind of a silly way to do things, and probably too simple a trick to use again, but if anything he felt secure in the response (or rather, lack thereof) he'd received.

Lex Luthor was intrigued, perplexed even, and it was because of him. That idea made Tim feel very smug indeed.

Looking over his mystery-hacker's addendum, Lex paused, and drew a sharp line through one of his notes. This kid wasn't under thirty. He was under twenty-five.


End file.
